I've spent the past week at a writers' retreat in an undisclosed location (I'm still here!). It's been insanely productive. I've written a 21,000-word novella, rewritten two partial novels, worked on my latest collaboration with Charlie Stross, critiqued about 20 stories, read a friend's book and critiqued it, and caught up on some reading (and I've still got three days left, and still to come: nonfiction book proposal, rewrite the new novella, and catch up on other projects and projectlets).

Therefore I am very happy that he makes time in his busy schedule to speak at our next Futurist Salon Friday the 19th of September 7pm. He will talk about copyright, scarcity, and spectrum, with lots of rhetorical flourishes...

We will be back at the Barnes and Noble bookstore at the Hillsdale Shopping Center just across of the San Mateo Caltrain Station. 11 West Hillsdale Blvd., Hillsdale Shopping Center San Mateo, CA 94403 650-341-5560

It usually goes until 9pm and if you are up for it you can join us for dinner afterwards.

The 10 year anniversary gift from SAP was a good telescope, and I will take it out this Wednesday, right after the weekly Rollerhockey. It will be the night that the Mars will be the closest to us in our lifetime.

More information at Nasa: "Count slowly: one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand.... You just got about 30 km closer to the planet Mars." and at SPACE.com where I got the picture from.

Last week via Wayne Nija suggested we should invite Neil Stephenson the author of Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon to present at one of the next Futurist Salons. I love Snow Crash, own Cryptonomicon, but never got around to read it. He also wrote one of my favorite Wired articles: Mother Earth Mother Board where he is traveling the globe as a hacker tourist to follow the history and current events of laying intercontinental data cables.

"My ongoing struggle against "continuous partial attention" Linda Stone, formerly of Apple and Microsoft, has coined the term "continuous partial attention" to describe life in the era of e-mail, instant messaging, cellphones, and other distractions. This curious feature of modern life poses a problem for a someone like me. Every productive thing that I do requires ALL my attention. I cannot put it any better than Donald Knuth, who writes on his website, "Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. " Knuth also provides the following quote from Umberto Eco: "I don't even have an e-mail address. I have reached an age where my main purpose is not to receive messages." "

I respect his position and reasoning and am wondering how my productivity would look like if I would make sure I had junks of 4 hours uninterrupted work time.

Good that not all Science Fiction authors are that reclusive. September 19th we will host Cory Doctorow more information to come.

This was an excellent Futurist Salon yesterday. Great theme, great audience, excellent speaker, good interaction and happy faces all over at the pizza place afterwards. I am still beaming from the experience. Even if you could influence your emotional state with a pleasureceutical (One of the things Zack touched on in his talk), currently I would "Just say no". Not needed, already there.

Thanks to everyone who came and made it such an enjoyable evening, especially Zack Lynch for opening our eyes to the upcoming Neurotechnology wave. For further reading check his Corante blog Brain Waves.

Coming on stage now is a stunning example of how civilization must rescue itself. It dwarfs the three big scientific alerts from the 1970s about global warming, ozone loss, and acid rain. But until the 1990s, no one knew much about abrupt climate change, those past occasions when the whole world flipped out of a warm-and-wet climate like today’s into the alternate mode, which is like a worldwide version of the Oklahoma Dust Bowl of the 1930s. There are big alterations in only 3-5 years. A few centuries later, the drought climate flips back into worldwide warm-and-wet, even more quickly. Unlike greenhouse warmings, the big flips have happened every few thousand years on average, though the most recent one was back before agriculture in 10,000 B.C. The next flip may arrive sooner than otherwise, thanks to our current warming trend. The northern extension of the Gulf Stream appears quite vulnerable to global warming in four different ways. An early warning might be a decline in this current. And according to two oceanographic studies published this last year, this vulnerable ocean current has been dramatically declining for the last 40-50 years, paralleling our global warming and rising CO2.

Wow, this is interesting/scary stuff. If you want to hear about the latest developments in that area you will be able to hear Professor William H. Calvin talk at the ACC2003 conference. Topic: "Social Symbiosis, Stability and Foresight".

We may be in for some nasty weather and I will go out now and enjoy the good one while it lasts.

In April Mike Korns introduced us to the latest in genetic and evolutionary computation. He used as bases Steven Johnson's' book Emergence. Steven is one of the guest bloggers at Zack Lynch's Brain Waves talking for the first time about his upcoming book Mind Wide Open.

Zack uses this time away from his blog to put the finishing touches on his upcoming book about Neurotechnology and Society.

The nascent neurotechnology wave (2010-2060) is being accelerated by the development of biochips and brain imaging technologies that make biological analysis inexpensive and pervasive. Biochips that can perform the basic bio-analysis functions (genomic, proteomic, biosimulation, and microfluidics) at a low cost will transform biological analysis and production in a very similar fashion as the microprocessor did for data. Nano-imaging techniques will also play a vital role in making the analysis of neuro-molecular level events possible. When data from advanced biochips and brain imaging are combined they will accelerate the development of neurotechnology, the set of tools that can influence the human central nervous system, especially the brain. Neurotechnology will be used for therapeutic ends and to enhance human emotional, cognitive and sensory system performance. (check out the rest in the PDF)

At the Futurist Salon this Friday the 15th of August 7pm we are probably the first ones to hear him talk about his findings. Last year we covered Gregory Stock's Redesigning Humans. Zack saw him present at the World Futurist Society Conference and told me afterwords that he may take the first 5 minutes to challenge some of his timeline assumptions. It is going to be interesting.